Swiss quality: who will lead CSKA after Nikolic's departure

A new character may soon appear in the Russian football championship. After the unexpected departure of Marko Nikolic, Fabio Celestini, who is not very familiar to our fans, is expected to be appointed head coach of CSKA Moscow. The story of the Swiss specialist's journey in his playing and coaching career can be found in the Izvestia article.

Forced replacement

At the start of the Russian off-season, a lot of attention is focused on CSKA. On June 1, the team won the FONBET Cup of Russia under the leadership of Marko Nikolic, who immediately after the final announced his intentions to compete for the RPL gold next season. Because of the Serb's loud phrases, no one even thought about the possibility of his imminent departure, but the reality struck with the news.

Less than a week later, there were unexpected insiders about the separation of the Muscovites from the coach. The rumors turned out to be true — the specialist bought out his contract and headed the Greek AEK, and the army hastily began searching for a new chief. Various surnames surfaced: Lichka, Cherchesov, Almeida, Osinkin, Cannavaro, Shpilevsky, Gerarts, Berezutsky. As a result, the club seems to have settled on the candidacy of 49-year-old Fabio Celestini.

The Swiss was not a star player, but he was a strong player. He played in Spain and France, played 35 matches for the national team, but the only notable achievements were the UEFA Cup final with Marseille, the victory in the Intertoto Cup with Troyes and a couple of Cups at home with Lausanne. Such a solid midfielder, who has not left a very bright mark in history. There was and there was.

His coaching career began immediately after graduating from the game, in 2011. Celestini spent a couple of years at Renan from the city of the same name with a population of about 20 thousand people — Fabio spent 15 years in this small club in his childhood and youth. Then the young specialist joined Bernd Schuster's headquarters at Malaga, and then worked exclusively in charge.

Fabio's entire coaching career speaks to his strengths. Celestini has a reputation for coming and clearing up the rubble, but more often than not there will be problems. He led his native Lausanne to the top division, where he failed to get above the penultimate place in two attempts and was fired. The fading "Lugano" Swiss rose from eighth place to third in 26 rounds, took bronze and got into the Europa League. But he failed the following season and was dismissed in the fall.

Then, in January 2020, the coach took over another local strong club, Lucerne, which was also the eighth in the Super League. It was not possible to repeat the success of Lugano in the championship, although here Celestini raised the team by a couple of positions, but the small town received the first Swiss Cup in 29 years. You can probably guess what happened in the fall. Yes — the bottom of the table and the termination of the contract.

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The Swiss Way

After resting for a year, Fabio dropped by Sion, but it didn't work out at all. Two points in six matches is too bad. Therefore, everything was limited to them. Of this short period, only the funny story about Mario Balotelli, which Celestini recalled, deserves to be mentioned.: "I told him that I was going to appoint him captain so that he could show his competitive spirit and take responsibility. He liked this offer, and he said that he would start working at full capacity the next day. I was looking forward to Mario's training, but he didn't come because he overslept. This is Balotelli. Later, he came up to me to apologize, but that was his style of behavior." The team then, by the way, did not taxi and flew out.

It turns out that in almost 10 years of his solo career, Celestini has never stayed anywhere for at least three full seasons. He almost always put things in order, achieved a result that he himself could not cope with later. But the skills of an anti-crisis manager are still quite in demand at about all times, because crises are constantly happening somewhere. In 2023, Basel needed just such a person.

The main Swiss grand was frankly collapsing. Moreover, shortly before the fall, the club reached the semi-finals of the Conference League and gave no reason to expect such catastrophic times. Following the results of 12 rounds, Basel was in last place in the Super League with five points. On October 31, the club signed Celestini — right on Fabio's 48th birthday.

An ambiguous choice. By that time, the coach had won only one of the last 23 matches of the Swiss elite. It seems that the team urgently needs to be restarted in a short time, but on the other hand, Basel's ambitions in domestic competitions are much higher. There were doubts about whether a temporary worker with obvious problems was needed in recent years. Nevertheless, they believed in Celestini.

Fabio gradually pulled Basel out of the basement and lifted it to eighth place with 48 points, the same number as Lucerne and Winterthur, who finished higher in additional indicators. The minimum plan has been fulfilled — the difficulties have been overcome, the shame has not happened. So far, everything is in line with previous examples from Celestini's football life.

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A historic success

But instead of further failure, the coach completed a historic season with a golden double. Xherdan Shaqiri, who arrived in the summer of 2024, helped a lot - the fans were wildly delighted with the very fact of the return of the muscular pet, as he also knocked out a fantastic 18 +21 in the championship. Thanks to the dazzling performance of the local legend, Celestini did not even have time to be fully charged for rejecting other fan favorites — Taulant Xhaka, Fabian Fry and Michael Lang.

Basel took the Cup and finally became the Swiss champion — they waited eight years. It is important that the most prestigious club in the country did it in the most spectacular style, scoring 91 goals in 38 games. Along the way, for example, an unusual record was set — for the first time in the history of the tournament, any team shipped five goals to an opponent in three consecutive matches. In principle, those who wanted to join CSKA can rejoice. Apparently, Celestini will be fun, too.

Fabio is an intelligent and adaptive specialist. He competently develops young people and is able to use different schemes — in Basel he especially loved 4-2-3-1, but calmly switched to three central defenders.

By the way, Celestini is quite familiar with Russia.: He crossed paths with Dmitry Sychev at Marseille, played twice against the Russian national team in the selection for Euro 2004, knocked out Lokomotiv from the Europa League qualification with Lausanne, after which he received 0:3 and 1:5 from CSKA in the group.

The Swiss has already regained his former greatness and brought long-awaited trophies to one red and blue grandee. Of course, there are fears of repeated nightmarish declines, but in a truly large club by the standards of the country, Celestini consolidated his initial success and climbed to the top.

Now we have to climb all over again — from CSKA. Prospects are definitely available. Maybe we should give him some legendary veteran to be sure, following the example of Shaqiri? Wagner recently came to Moscow, and he will undoubtedly come in handy for depth now.